At Home on Hendrik

These photos are getting properly old now, but they actually show some beautification of Hendrik in amongst all our destruction and mayhem. It also shows how nice things can be when we get in professionals and dedicated artists as opposed to our poor, clumsy hands…

Our front door frame was made of pine (great idea for an external frame!) and was already spongey when we bought it, but declined rapidly over the past year. Eventually chunks were just falling off and we couldn’t even keep it closed, let alone lock it. It took months to find any carpenter who would rebuild it, but we eventually fell on our feet with an amazing chippy, Clive, who did a lot of beautiful interior work on one of our neighbours’ boats.

Before:

After:

And the other major wooden improvement on Hendrik was the very back wall of the Captain’s Cabin bedroom. It was originally two bedrooms, then the previous owners ripped out (sob!) the dividing wall and split wardrobe, and put in two bunkbeds along the back wall, laying some awful, cheap plywood against it.

We ripped out the bunk beds months ago to fit in our double bed, but finally got around to hiring our artist neighbour, Rachel, to replicate the alternating dark and light boards on the living room ceiling onto that back wall.

Before:

After:

We’ve got two coats of french polish so far, but it’s going to take quite a few more to match the glossy shee of all the rest of the woodwork back there…

And as a bonus, she also finished building some shelves for us at the head of the bed. It almost feels like a proper bedroom back there now!